The Egg safety problem

Question

In the food safety wiki question we recommend not keeping eggs at room temperature for more than 2-hours.

Eggs can sweat at room temperature and promote salmonella growth (which appears on the shell more often than inside). From USDA:

A cold egg left out at room temperature can sweat, facilitating the movement of bacteria into the egg and increasing the growth of bacteria. Refrigerated eggs should not be left out more than 2 hours.

From BC Centre for Disease Control:

Never leave cooked eggs or egg dishes at room temperature for longer than 2 hours.

and FDA requires egg refrigeration immediately and for retail. They also say:

SAFE HANDLING INSTRUCTIONS: To prevent illness from bacteria: keep eggs refrigerated, cook eggs until yolks are firm, and cook foods containing eggs thoroughly.

This literally means you shouldn't eat eggs sunny side up and plenty of restaurants serve them with regular eggs (you can pasteurize eggs with yolks remaining liquid).

The note about Refrigerated Eggs suggests that the USDA is aware that eggs keep at room temperature from the beginning may be safe. Most countries in the EU allow selling of eggs at room temperature. SA Answer: Howard McGee in "On Food & Cooking" says that egg quality deteriorates as much in one day at room temperature as it does four days under refrigeration. We were told the same thing in school.

Also:

The reason that eggs in the US are typically sold under refrigeration is because they are washed with warm water and detergent to remove the large amount of bacteria that are deposited on the shell while being layed. Once the cuticle is removed the egg becomes more porous.

What should be the recommendation then?

Answer 1

General answer, for all food safety questions: recommend whatever the government food safety agency recommends. If reasonable, you can go on to explain what the risks are of not following that advice - obviously sometimes it's more dangerous than other times.

Yes, the government is often overly paranoid, but it's not our job to question their recommendation. This is stuff that can get people sick or dead. If 1000 people read a post here saying to ignore the official advice, one of those people could well be the unlucky one who gets food poisoning. We want to give advice that keeps everyone safe, not just most people. Go with what the government says, not with what you read in one study, what doesn't get you sick, or what works 99% of the time.

As a member of the community, I have long commented on and downvoted answers giving probably-but-not-always safe advice - I would encourage others to be equally vigilant. Yes, in my own kitchen, I do things that aren't FDA-approved. But I do not want our site to tell arbitrary numbers of people to do the same thing. It'll get people hurt.

If someone asks a specific question about specific risks, feel free to dig into the science - for example, how much the risks from salmonella in a contaminated egg increase over time at room temperature. But if someone asks "what's safe?", stick to official recommendations. You could perhaps provide additional detail about the risks of not following that advice (some things are riskier than others) - but please don't give potentially dangerous advice.

The only reason we're having this discussion about eggs is that they're a unique case where different governments make different recommendations. The FDA says to refrigerate, so that's what we should say for people in the US; the EU apparently has different ideas, which we can also pass along too.

Answer 2

Don't forget that we are not an official body and we don't need to have a party line. If the world disagrees about what is safe, then we will probably get conflicting answers too. This is completely OK.

It is what the voting system is here for. Answers which are obviously crazy should get downvoted. As for the rest, if we have two camps (e.g. sunny side up not safe because FDA says so vs. ssu safe because everybody eats them with no problems), I expect that proponents of each side should state their sources and/or state the assumptions under which their argument holds, at the latest when they get downvotes from the other camp.

Indeed, if we were to start censoring people because their opinion deviates from a line we have decided to follow, I would get seriously worried about the site. If there is a conflict, it is best for the public to be informed of both sides.

As for answers like "I once ate meat left on the counter for a month and nothing happened, so leaving meat out is safe for a month", I still think that they should not be censored by deleting either. Instead, they should be downvoted by anybody who thinks them incorrect - and the crazier the answer, the better this works.

Answer 3

There is no "egg safety problem."

The evidence is overwhelming that the US safety practices for eggs are at least no worse than those in Europe not counting Sweden, where eggs are washed.

The EU is considering requiring egg washing per this article in Food Production Daily.

There is no credible evidence presented (or that I found, given the difficulty of proving a negative) that washing eggs harms safety, and there is evidence that it does not: Journal of Food Protection, Vol. 74, No. 10, 2011, Pages 1649–1654, doi:10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-11-013.

There is also considerable evidence that refrigerated eggs degrade in quality on the order of 1/4th to 1/7th as fast as non-refrigerated eggs, which while not a safety issue, is a quality issue. The idea that refrigeration somehow reduces quality also seems to lack in credibility, and there is evidence to the opposite.

I think our recommendations are just fine, although we can note that short term storage at room temperature, if the eggs will be used rapidly, is acceptable assuming the shells are not damaged.